Sunday Classics: Gotta dance -- Bach the suite-maker, Part 1 [formerly "Preview 1"]

Guitarist Per-Olov Kindgren plays his arrangement of the Air, popularly known as "Air on the G String," from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3.

by Ken

In my small way I've tried to defend Bach against the charge of being an offputtingly "intellectual" composer, whose music demands a superhuman effort of analytical penetration. The thing is, there's an element of truth to this. Bach can be difficult. But I don't think you enter the highest ranks of the musical immortals without a powerful ability, even compulsion, to communicate on a basic human level, and J.S.B. could do this as well as anyone who's ever set writing instrument to music paper.

This week we're going to dabble with the world of the suite as practiced by Bach, which means the partita and even overture as well, since functionally they were indistinguishable. I've thought for a long time that it would be fun to approach the large number of such works Bach wrote for such diverse forces -- keyboard, violin, cello, orchestra -- by breaking them down into the dance forms he used so frequently. But Bach always felt free to slip in a "ringer" movement, a "something else," and I can't help but start off with the amazingly beautiful Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3, which we hear above played in a guitar arrangement, and we'll hear more of in the click-through.

FOR MORE OF THE AIR, AND MORE OF
"BACH THE SUITE-MAKER," CLICK HERE

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